


Ashes and Fire

by orphan_account



Category: After School Nightmare, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Heathers
Genre: Bodyswap, Crossover, Genderswap, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-16
Updated: 2009-11-16
Packaged: 2017-10-03 01:42:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,689
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12824
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Buffy, Veronica: two Slayers, one dream.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ashes and Fire

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thuvia ptarth (thuviaptarth)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thuviaptarth/gifts).



> Series spoilers for Buffy; spoilers for Heathers; no spoilers and no prior knowledge needed for ASN. Note that I've taken the liberty of skating over the timeline issues involved in colliding Buffy and Heathers. Also, total crack.

You didn't think you'd be coming back. The truth is that you're intercepted before you even have a chance to leave.

You're watching Giles with his unsteady gait and Willow in her wheelchair with Oz at her side, and Cordelia and Xander. Your eyes feel like a drought. No more tears for you, you've promised yourself, no more opening your heart only to have the world slam shut on you. You'd think dying once would have taught you that.

But no: the woman eases next to you so subtly that by the time you notice her, it's too late to knock her out without drawing attention. Her uniform is like the school nurse's, but whiter and better tailored. "Miss Summers," she says with an impersonal smile. "It's time for your class."

"Sorry," you say. "I'm not in school anymore."

"Do you remember the last thing Angelus told you?"

You freeze. How does she--"Never trust a vampire."

It's not enough. "He said you're part demon, the way all Slayers are," the woman murmurs. "He said sooner or later the demon will win, and that's why Slayers die young. He said you're just like--"

"I'm coming," you say flatly. But Angelus's words echo through your mind:

_Face it, Buffy, you're just like me._

* * *

Dear Diary:

You always see someone first from a distance. She's pretty, of course: petite, blonde, funereal taste in clothes, some kind of weapon concealed on her. The first thing I thought was, Oh God, not another Heather.

Then I heard that she'd blown up her last school, and I thought, Fuck. It's another J.D.

* * *

Given the Hellmouth, it doesn't surprise you in the least to be led to a basement you've never seen before. The halls are bright in a sterile way, the floor tilted so slightly you doubt Willow or Xander would feel it.

The woman brings you to a room partitioned by curtains the color of cobwebs, to a bed behind one of the curtains. "This is a special class you must pass to graduate," she says. "You will share a dream with the other students in the class, and your goal is to find the key."

"What does it look like?" you ask. Two years of looking up artifacts under Giles' guidance have taught you at least the basics of research.

She merely smiles. "That's for you to find out. Now lie down, please."

The transition is so quick that you're not sure you fell asleep at all. Between one breath and the next you're--

You're not breathing. It's hard to say what's the first thing you notice, but that's probably it. You're standing in one of the school's hallways at night. The window next to you does not show your reflection.

Slowly, you raise your hand and turn it over. By then you already know. The fingers are Angel's, strong and tender and violent. The silver rings are Angelus's.

The only thing that's wrong is the necklace: three plain beads on a black cord. Impatient, you snap the cord. The beads explode into dust, one by one, and so do you.

* * *

Dear Diary:

There are vampires at Sunnydale. I killed two with a 2B pencil the other day. With vampires you don't even have to make it look like a suicide.

* * *

The next dream, you've at least figured out not to mess with the cord or the beads. The simple act of walking is more difficult than you'd counted on. You spend some time tripping over your own toes before you get the hang of it. Everything looks smaller, more breakable.

The scariest thing, actually, is how little time it takes you to get used to it.

You ghost through the halls and go up and down the stairs, seeking other dreamers. It helps that you have a vampire's senses. Every time the air shifts, every time a leaf taps against a window, you are agonizingly aware of it. Even the sun prickles at your consciousness, nighttime though it is in this world.

Then you hear the footsteps. Whoever it is, is trying to be quiet. There's a scent, too, delicious and tantalizingly familiar.

You slip into a classroom before realizing that all the wooden desks and chairs are not exactly a tactical advantage. Unless maybe your stalker is another vampire.

Staying absolutely still is not a problem when you have no pulse and don't need to breathe. When the stranger crosses the threshold, you're ready--

"Slayer," you say blankly when you see the stake in her hand. The word comes out wrong, husky and knotted up with threat.

Blonde hair, light brown eyes, slender frame and small breasts clad all in black. It's you, except for the necklace, which is identical to your own. And except for the fact that no recognition narrows those eyes. You can't imagine any universe in which you don't recognize Angel.

The smart thing would be to slam this other-self to the floor and knock away the stake. But it isn't every day you see your face on someone else.

Her heartbeat is rapid but steady. It awakens a sudden fierce hunger at the base of your throat, an almost-warmth at your groin. You stare at her, reminding yourself that Slayers can't read thoughts. Unless they can in dreams.

Her eyes are bright, amused, possibly cynical. "Are you defective somehow?"

You've just discovered that you don't need to blink. "Excuse me?"

"Every other vampire I've dusted has had the sense to run or fight," she says.

"Maybe I'm not a vampire."

She walks right up to you, straight-hipped stride, head tilted back just enough so she can look you in the eyes. "Really," she says, halfway to a whisper. With her free hand she reaches up to the side of your neck, where the artery lies silent. The touch burns.

She smiles. "No pulse." Her fingers slide down along your collarbone, down the exposed sheen of your shirt, and come to a stop just over your heart. "No heartbeat."

Without warning, she shoves you, spins, kicks you in the knee. Unthinkingly, you sweep out her legs from under her as you go down.

She ends up on top. It figures.

You mean to wrestle the stake from her hand. What you actually do is draw her head down for a savage kiss. Is this how you tasted to Angel, hot and sweet and vulnerable? Her hair tumbles loose from its pins and tickles the inch of skin exposed at your wrist.

She moans softly, exactly how you know you sound when fucking or fingering yourself, and her eyelids flutter down. The tip of her tongue dances around yours, then tests the ridges of your teeth. No fangs, not yet.

At her insistence you shrug out of your coat. Her fingers tug at the buttons of your shirt. The pale, flat expanse of skin shocks you. To distract yourself, you look up, only to be met by the tantalizing sway of her breasts.

You are trying to figure out how to get yourself out of this--there has to be something wrong even in dreaming about having sex with your own body--when you hear the stake roll aside. The next thing you know, her hand has closed around your cock. She draws arcane spirals along the shaft, cups your balls in her palm.

"Who are you?" she asks. Her grip relaxes. Tightens. "_Who are you?_"

It's impossible to think clearly with her pulse hammering in your hearing, your cock hard and eager in her hand. You blurt out, "I'm you."

Angelus's voice is a disadvantage. So far everything you've said has come out warped into mockery. How did Angel manage to sound so quiet and awkward?

"Really," she purrs. "Show me."

You should be looking for the key, or asking some questions yourself, or beating a retreat. Instead, the two of you roll over. Compulsively, you kiss the ridges over her eyes and the convex curve of her cheek, nip along the base of the neck, never breaking skin. You hike up her shirt and bra--black trimmed with festive pink lace, you know the one--and lick the dark nipples, lingering every time her breath catches or her fingers spasm.

You rub the head of your cock against her crotch. She half-smiles as she reaches for her zipper. Her legs open to you. Maybe she's not thinking clearly, either. But it's not a virgin's smile that curves her lips.

You plunge into her. The first bead around your neck cracks into dust. You're not sure whether the accompanying stabbing pain in your heart is arousal or guilt.

Maybe it's only that someone with your shape and someone with Angel's are foredoomed to love and destroy each other, whatever the arena.

The second bead breaks when your face shifts and the fangs emerge. She doesn't flinch, instead tearing her palm open with her fingernails. You lap at the blood. To your senses, other-Buffy is sheathed in sun-heat and summer-fragrance, and the blood, the blood is rich as chocolate and red velvet and moonless nights.

The third bead breaks when you return your attention to fucking her and she squeezes tight all around you and you--

It's disappointing to wake up with nothing between your legs.

The woman in the nurse's uniform smiles inscrutably and congratulates you for surviving the dream.

* * *

Dear Diary:

If someone's true self is a vampire, I'd better find out who he is so I can kill him. After all, the first psycho I fucked is dead. Let's see if I can make it two for two.

* * *

You don't sleep at all the next night because you're on patrol, like you promised Giles. Maybe he thought you gave in too easily. But what are you supposed to say? _Hi, Giles, deep down I'm really Angelus--?_

The vampires are few tonight. Another Slayer has been hunting. You see her footprints in the moss, the splinters, the smears of dust.

Careless.

Or worse, deliberate.

You search and search for her in the maze of graves. No luck. She's better than you gave her credit for.

* * *

Dear Diary:

Her name is Buffy Summers. Apparently she's also a Slayer. All Slayers are one, phoenix ever-rising: that's what my Watcher told me before she died. So maybe it makes sense that I dream myself into Buffy's image.

I need her help.

* * *

Neither you nor your Slayer are interested in the other dreamers. Sometimes you snap the necks of porcelain dolls and faceless girls and wolves just to prove you can. Sometimes she lets you.

Death is your gift.

Death is your game.

You track each other through rooms tangled with roses and glittering with broken glass. Each time she finds you she feeds you. Each time you find her you fuck her.

You keep trying to draw back, to refuse the blood. She wins every time, inevitable as gravity.

Curiously, your ability to slay in waking life has improved, as if the killer in you is maturing. But each time the dust floats away, leaving behind a momentary skeletal outline, the sensation that burns in you is not pride for having made the world a little safer, or relief that you haven't failed your duty, but territorial satisfaction.

You know it's bad when the neighborhood vampires start leaving red offerings for you at the graveyard.

* * *

Dear Diary:

Forgery isn't art, but I can turn out a likeness, and I know when to go to the local Watcher. He went white when he saw the sketch.

And Buffy? "Acathla swallowed him," she said.

(Five minute break for her friends to tell me what an Acathla was.)

"Well," I said, "he's walking around in my dreams and I've never even met him. Can't be a good sign."

Buffy stared into the distance. "Can't be," she said, sounding tired.

* * *

It's time for a shopping trip.

You take the bus to the mall and emerge, a few hours later, with what you want: black silk charmeuse blouse, black leather pants, black trenchcoat. The black eyeliner you already have. And the shoes are a lost cause, so you just go with the most sensible black pumps you own.

The next morning you take your time dressing. Everything has to be perfect. You do stop looking in the mirror after you realize that having a reflection bothers you.

You know the route this new Slayer takes to homeroom. If she's the one who's been wearing your face all this time, she'll get the message. You couldn't have painted yourself a target any more clearly.

Around the corner, and there she is, smiling ironically at the garish red hair-ribbon taped to the inside of her locker door. Dark hair flawlessly styled, narrow face, sardonic mouth. You lean against the wall, coughing softly.

She looks up. Her pupils dilate and she inhales. It startles you all over again that here, outside the dream, she's a few inches taller than you are.

You smile at her, a vampire's knowing smile, and unfold yourself from the wall.

As you pass her, she whispers in your ear, "I want to suck your dick, Buffy."

If you had a dick you would have come right then and there.

Carelessly, Veronica drops her books. She takes you by the hand to the girls' bathroom.

"Veronica--"

"After a few months of being fucked in your body," she says, "I think I know what pleases you."

Your mouth is dry.

"Jesus, live a little." Her voice isn't as steady as she's trying to make it be.

Veronica rips your blouse open. No bra underneath. "I think you've forgotten how to be a girl," she says, kissing her way down between your breasts. She squeezes one contemplatively, then sucks on a nipple, slowly, rhythmically. Comes up for air: "Only girls can be Slayers."

The truth is, you don't want to remember what it was like to make love to Angel. You'd rather fuck as Angelus, no conscience, no grief, no guilt.

Veronica pulls back.

You reach for her. She slaps your hand away. "Honey," she says, "I understand you went through a rough time--"

You stiffen. "I don't see what you could possibly understand."

Veronica's fingers move abortively for the cigarette she doesn't have. "You think you're the only Slayer who sent her lover to hell to save the world?"

"Does that mean you're going to send me to hell when you're done with me?" you ask.

In place of an answer, she kisses you again.

* * *

Dear Diary:

It's clear that the Watcher is too attached to Buffy to let anything happen to her.

The problem is, the same is true of me.

There's got to be another solution.

* * *

That night, although you're in your own bed and not in class, you dream of the world's parade of Slayers, mayfly lives marked by violence and loneliness. The heat of them nourishes you season after season, century after century.

For a long time you're only aware of the paradoxical hollowness in your belly as you drink and drink and drink. Then you begin to notice the faces. At first they're random splotches of colors, alien shapes under your hands.

You finally slow down when you realize you're drinking from Kendra. You're standing in the library, and moonlight from the windows patterns the floor in silver and shadow. You toss Kendra aside, only to find that Veronica is waiting for you, head held high, arms crossed. She wears no necklace. Come to think of it, neither do you.

Unlike you, she's wearing her own skin.

Your erection presses insistently against your pants. Your smile is not your own. "Couldn't get enough?" you ask. You circle her slowly, spiraling ever closer. She smells of violets and cigarette ash. And fear, high-pitched and sweet.

"I'm next in line," she says, uncrossing her arms. "If I have to have a demon lover in this line of work, I'd rather it be a woman."

You grab her hand and shove it down the front of your pants. Her fingertips are warm against the smooth skin of your prick. Her eyes, on the other hand, remain sharp and avid and not a little pitying.

"Buffy--"

You jerk away from her. She rocks back on her toes a little, catching her balance like a cat. "Don't call me that," you say.

"Who are you, then?" Veronica says.

Your voice is bitter. "I'm a killer. I'm part demon." You didn't kill Ms. Calendar or Kendra or Willow's fish, you didn't torture Giles, but you're the one who caused Angel to lose his soul. You're the one who set the whole thing in motion by loving a vampire. The dream isn't telling you anything that you didn't already know.

"Every Slayer is a killer. Every Slayer is part demon." Veronica sways closer, closer. You watch her warily. Finally she rests her head against your chest. "Every Slayer is part human."

In spite of yourself, you stroke the dark ripples of her hair. "Then what's that?" you ask, nodding at Kendra's crumpled body. It landed in exactly the same position you found her in the library.

She turns her head slightly so she's speaking into your coat. Nevertheless, you can hear every word. "You. Me. All of us. We are ashes and fire." She traces a cross over your groin. "We are forever."

Veronica sinks to her knees. There's a twist to her smile as she eases your hard-on free of your pants.

"I thought you wanted a woman," you remark.

Playfully, she runs her tongue along the side of your dick. A tremor runs through you. "But you are," she says in all seriousness. "You have a woman's soul. I should know, because I have it too."

The heat of her breath and the velvet texture of her tongue tempt you so badly it's like having to walk away from newly spilled blood.

Once you would have come up with a better metaphor than that. Or is it a simile?

"No, Veronica," you say. For the first time in a long time, you _listen_ to your voice: the way it's too deep, the way it always sounds amused or sarcastic or violent. You're motionless as she closes her mouth around you despite your protest. Your height, your dead flesh, your unnaturally acute hearing and sense of smell--you've come to take these for granted, to feel more comfortable in this skin than the one that really belongs to you.

Veronica isn't paying attention to you. Eyes half-shut, face flushed, she teases your cock with her tongue. If she's not careful you're going to shoot come down her throat.

"_Veronica_." With an effort, you pull yourself out of her before you lose your resolve. "Did you bring a stake?"

"No," she says crisply.

"Sword, cross, sunlight," you suggest. "Holy water. If I have a woman's soul"--it is difficult to keep a straight face when you're so hard it aches--"prove it to me."

_Prove that I'm more than a demon._

Dreams have accustomed you to dying. You don't expect anything to come of this but a new morning in your bed with Mr. Gordo greeting you from the dresser with his benign stare.

Veronica is at least decisive: she breaks off a table leg and slams it through your heart, not even pausing to wipe her mouth. For a moment all you see is her face as though it's wreathed in sunlight and fire.

Pain lances through your chest. Blood stains the wood dark and reddens Veronica's hand. The strike is true, but you're not dust. You're not dust.

"Human weakness never goes away," Veronica says. In the shadows of her eyes you see the golden cross Angel gave you, you see yourself leaning into his embrace; you see yourself kicking Angelus in the groin, unable to bring yourself to kill him. "But neither does human strength."

When you wake up, your hand is pressed between your breasts. There is no hole, but your heart is open again.

* * *

Dear Diary:

Sheriff's back.

Time to take them down.

* * *

You and Veronica have your arms around each others' waists when the nurse stops in front of you. Her brows draw down fractionally, although her air of professionalism never wavers. She says, "I don't think--"

"I know who she is and she knows who I am," you tell her. You may not have identified the other dreamers, but that doesn't matter now.

"Very well," the nurse says. She still insists on putting you in a separate bed and letting down the curtains, as if Veronica's presence didn't beat against your awareness like a sister's heartbeat.

Moments after you close your eyes, you're in class. You're at the crest of a hill overlooking the city. The wind is cold. Nothing's changed: you feel the weight of silver on your fingers, the silk and leather against your skin, the beads around your neck. The fact that there's no heat in you, and your heart is unmoving, and the world is too small.

And everything's changed: up the hill comes Veronica, wisps of blonde hair framing her face, hands in the pockets of her pale blue coat, wearing her own necklace. She smiles up at you, languid and utterly assured.

Following her are all the dreamers, all the trapped souls, all the students whose names are ciphered from you. Porcelain doll with mirrors for eyes, pale-eyed wolf, flayed skin seething with arcane symbols, knight whose armor is made of festive paper, and more, and more--

"It's time," Veronica says.

You bend your head to kiss her, taking your time. Then you grasp the necklace and pull it over your head. The cord stretches to accommodate you.

The key is yourself. You should have known that all along.

Beads upon beads crumble as the cords fall to the ground. Clouds obscure the faint light gathering at the horizon. Snow begins to drift down. Veronica catches a snowflake on her tongue.

Together, you walk down the hill and into the town, leaving your footsteps in the snow for others to follow.


End file.
